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Monday, December 30, 2013

As I have been busy writing my five-part series about the AYAR Student Movement (here, here, here, here, and here), I have not had the time to extend to you any seasonal greetings.If I may be allowed to speak personally for a moment, I started this blog in June, about three months after I had been discharged from the ROK Army, out of sheer boredom. I did not have a job at the time, I did not know there were other K-bloggers out there, and I just decided to write to stave off boredom and creeping depression as I received one rejection letter after another from the places that I applied to for jobs. My inspiration to write this blog came from none other than The Korean, the blogger behind Ask a Korean.(This is not to say that I compare myself to The Korean. Firstly, some of his politics annoys me and secondly, he is a blogger of a far superior caliber than I am.)When I initially started blogging, I had no idea that anyone was ever going to end up reading anything that I wrote. I simply imagined that I was writing an open-to-all public diary of sorts that I thought was going to be forgotten in some haunted corner of the World Wide Web, never to be read, and soon to be forgotten.In the six months since I have started blogging, however, I found a decent job, and I have also found a social life outside of my job as well as my blogger persona. Yes, I do keep all three separate. But more importantly, I have discovered, much to my surprise, that there are people who actually read my chicken scratches.I do not pretend to be ignorant of the fact that, due to the content of this blog, I have rubbed people the wrong way; some more so than others. In fact, most of the responses that I got to my blog posts, both here on this blog and elsewhere on the Internet, were vehement opposition rather than pleasant agreement.But that does not matter. What matters is that, though not always entirely pleasant, people, you, have taken the time to read what I had written, and took the time to write back and argue with me, and sometimes, to agree with me. As someone who never imagined that anyone would ever read anything I have to write besides myself, it was a great joy.So thank you, dear readers, for making 2013 a surprisingly fun year. I hope that 2014 will bring better fortune to us all.So, though belated, I would like to wish all of you a Merry Christmas, and though still a bit early, a Happy New Year.Sincerely,John LeeThe Korean Foreigner

On
the one hand, we have the near-fascistic government that thinks that
it can bully a segment of the population into cowering submission,
which wants the public to think that it represents law and order.

On
the other hand, we have a manipulative public sector union that wants
to protect its members’ iron rice bowls all the while wanting the
public to think that it is the champion of the working class.

Once
again, and lamentably so, economics has been trumped by politics.

For
its part, the government does not appear to wish to work with unions
to solve labor issues or to restructure the economy into a “creative
economy,” whatever that means. For all intents and purposes, the
government appears to want to dictate terms and for the union to
simply follow orders.

As
for the unions, they do not appear to wish to work with the
government either. They have little desire for reforms out of fear
of losing their protected jobs and (relatively) cushy wages and
benefits. Additionally, we have a growing number of university
students who seem to think that siding with the unions is somehow in
their own self-interest. Never mind the fact that one of the
functions of unions is to protect existing members from having to
compete with younger workers.

For
good or for ill, this is now a battle that each side feels that it
must win. However, all of the combatants have very
similar goals that only differ in extent and intent.

As
much as the government may want to
establish a
KORAIL subsidiary, it does not, in fact,
have any desire or incentive to privatize KORAIL. Even if there are
genuine free market capitalists (or at least fiscal hawks) within the
government, all incumbents have one desire and one desire only – to
be reelected (unless constitutionally prohibited). As aloof as
Saenuri lawmakers may appear to be, they have very little incentive
to stand for principles when standing for principles will get them
booted from their seats of power.

The
business executives of KORAIL do not wish to see their business
privatized either. What they want is to
establish a KORAIL subsidiary to run high-speed train services so
that they and their shareholders can pocket the profits that they
might earn through the subsidiary all the while still being
subsidized by the government in order to keep its main business kept
afloat by the taxpayers. They want to have their cake and eat it,
too.

The
union members of KORAIL are the most dead set against privatization
for the most obvious reasons. Whenever a publicly-run business
becomes privatized, in order to boost profitability and efficiency,
labor, being the easiest cost to cut, becomes the first to be sent to
the chopping block. The university students are in agreement with
the unions.

I
am an advocate of laissez-faire capitalism. I haven’t a dog in
this fight. As far as I am concerned, they are all wrong.

As
unpleasant as choosing the lesser of two evils is, however, sometimes a
choice has to be made. As unpleasant as it may be to choose between
two evils, if that objection were to be accepted literally, people
would have no choice whatsoever but to become pacifists – a moral
position that can only encourage evil, rather than punish it.

One
way or another, the public has to make a choice; and the public ought
to
side with the unions over the government.

I
did not choose to support the unions because of some kind of sympathy
I might have for them. I have very little patience for many of the
unions’ causes. However, I have chosen to support the unions, and
encourage others to do so as well, for two reasons.

Firstly,
it is because the government is far more powerful than the unions.
The government has more journalists, intellectuals, pundits,
corporate leaders, and (most importantly) guns than the unions.
Secondly, it is because the government can (and has) cause much more
harm to the economy, as well as to human rights, than the unions ever
could.

However,
that does not mean that a victory for the unions will translate to
anything good for the people. As already mentioned in my previous
post, the unions’ interests is not, in fact, the same as that
of the public’s. I am supporting the unions only because I want
the unions and the government to expend every bit of political
capital (as well as actual capital) each side might possess in order
to fight each other long enough until both sides are exposed to the
public for what they really are – entrenched political organizations that are fighting over the public’s
money.

The
fact is that the public sector unions are the Little Brother to the
government’s Big Brother. However, right now, there has been a
falling out between the thugs and they have chosen to engage in
combat.

As
for the government, despite its insistence, it is not fighting to
improve economic liberties or market efficiency. The government’s
battle with the public sector unions should
be
a fight over fiscal responsibility. It is not. It is merely a
battle over who gets to control the loot that we call tax revenues.

There
are other (supposed) capitalists in the mainstream media who are
anti-union but their anti-union stance is translated to being
pro-government. That is either a mistake on the part of genuine
capitalists who have not thought their positions through thoroughly
or they are, in fact, nothing more than government mouthpieces.

The
AYAR students, for their part, fall into one of several different
categories.

They
feel that the “system” that they were preparing to become a part
of their whole lives has abandoned them, and are now fighting with
the unions to preserve the status quo, all the while knowing that the status quo has been broken for decades.

They
genuinely, and naively, believe that their self-interests and the
unions’ interests are one and the same. If so, their teachers and
professors are to blame for having crippled their minds with such
debilitating nonsense.

They
are angry and anxious about the future but because they are unsure
of what is actually wrong, they have laid the blame on the most
convenient targets – the government and the corporations. Though
governments and corporations certainly do share a lot of the blame,
there is more of it to go around, but it is much easier to damn
others and the “scourge of capitalism” than it is to question
one’s own ethics, morality, and culture.

They
might genuinely know not what they do. Despite their claims
otherwise, they might not possess all the information that they need
to make an educated decision. If this is the case, it would appear
that, without intending to or even seeming to fully understand the
consequences or even the reasons behind their actions, the students
have made the best choice possible under the circumstances by
throwing their weight behind the unions.

If
their siding with the union was the result of dumb luck, for their
sake, I hope that the students learn more about economics and
economic realities before wading into economic discussions in the
future. Barring that, I hope that dumb luck continues to favor them
that they may continue to make sound decisions.

However,
the AYAR Movement, despite its seemingly educated background, is
nothing more than just another mob. And all mobs are passionately
unthinking and full of obnoxious self-righteousness regardless of
whose side they are on. As such, I will not place too much hope on
them. Doing so will lead to one disappointment after another.

So,
though I have decided to throw my support behind the unions, and,
again, I encourage others to do so as well, I do so with great
disgust.

To
paraphrase Shakespeare, may there be a plague
on
both
their houses.

Regardless
of one’s political inclinations, everyone must recognize the
unions’ right to exist, as well as the AYAR Movement’s support
for the unions, as it is guaranteed by the Republic
of Korea Constitution in Article 21, Section 1, which states:

All
citizens shall enjoy freedom of speech and the press, and freedom of
assembly and association.

However,
it has to remembered that a right
cannot and must not violate the rights of others. Any right that
does so ceases to be a right and instead becomes a privilege that can
only be guaranteed through violence.

Furthermore,
it must also be remembered that the Korea
Railroad Corporation (KORAIL) is a government-owned corporation,
which is funded by government subsidies. It also has to be
remembered that the government has no money of its own. The only
source of funds that the government has is its tax revenue and its
mint.

Only
a public-sector industry can limp along for as long as KORAIL has
while paying wages and bonuses that it cannot afford without being
forced to declare bankruptcy.

Although
we have to wait until the dust settles, which could take a long
while, before it can be calculated how much the union’s strike is
costing the overall economy, it is already estimated to have reached
into the millions of dollars, and could potentially reach into the
billions.

Essentially,
this monopolistic public union of a monopolistic government-owned
corporation has once again decided to hold the public hostage in
order to guarantee that its members can continue to hold on to their
iron rice bowls at the taxpayers’ expense.

The
union, along with the Korean
Confederation of Trade Unions
(KCTU), as well as the AYAR students have attempted to paint their
strike against the government as a battle between the People and the
Police State. For reasons that have already been mentioned in my
previous post and its near-fascistic
use of the police to arrest union workers, the government has all
but ensured complete alienation from the people.

The
unions, for their own part, are reliving their glory days. Since the
1997
Asian Financial Crisis, union memberships have continuously
fallen with the exception of those in the civil service, which
has actually seen an increase in membership (surprise, surprise).
However, thanks to President Park Geun-hye’s spectacularly mediocre
ability at governance, the unions have come roaring back to life as
they have been given the perfect excuse to appear
to be resisting
against a dictatorship; just as they had done in the 1970s and 80s.

Despite
all of the Park administration’s faults, and they are legion, it is
not
a dictatorship. Nor is there even a real threat of a return to
dictatorship. Any contrary claim is hyperbolic speech. But its
incompetence has given the impression of a return to the bad old
days. This impression was all that the unions needed.

We
have to take note that the main thrust of the unions’ argument is
that they are opposed to the privatization of KORAIL. This is
despite the government’s (frustratingly) repeated
insistence that it has no plans to privatize KORAIL and its
promise
to revoke the proposed subsidiary’s rail service license if its
stakes are ever sold to private investors.

We
also have to take note that the unions seldom ever talk about the
aforementioned numbers. It cannot afford to do so unless it wishes
to lose the people’s sympathies. Any prolonged mentioning of
economic realities will not do the unions any favors. As a result,
the unions continue to obfuscate the numbers and have gamed the
narrative as an ideological battle.

As
far as the unions are concerned, this is not a fight about how much
their salaries and benefits are costing (or will cost) the taxpayers
but rather about how President Park is trying to force her
right-wing, anti-union agenda at the expense of the working class.

What
the unions are NOT saying is that they feel they are entitled to
continue to suckle on the teat of the taxpayers in order to preserve
their iron rice bowls; damn the fact that the business they work for
is a bottomless money pit.

We
have to keep in mind that neither the unions’ nor the AYAR
Movement’s message is about freedom against a dictatorship – as
was the case in the 1970s and 80s. What they are calling for is the
maintenance of the broken status quo. The unions have claimed that
they are fighting for their families and that they are champions of
the working class, but at the end of the day, what they want is for
the taxpayers to continue to pay up. Damn the consequences and damn
the ethics!

The
KORAIL union’s successful attempt at conscripting the aid of the
rest of the unions under the KCTU umbrella is a cynical ploy to fool
the people into believing that they are one and the same despite the
fundamental difference between private and public-sector unions.
That is because the public-sector union workers do not have a leg to
stand on without the aid of private-sector unions.

Although
union strikes have the same goal in mind, the main distinction
between private and public unions is that private sector unions
cannot make unreasonable demands of their employers. The best
example of this is what had occurred in General Motors Korea (GMK).
During the summer, GMK workers went on a partial
strike to demand a raise in their monthly salaries as well as for
a one-time bonus payment of ₩6 million each.

GMK
workers have since been forced to learn that there are consequences to
their actions when it was recently reported that General
Motors plans
to reduce its workforce in Korea. There is also increased
speculation
that one of the reasons that General Motors may eventually shut down
its operations in Korea is due to Korea’s frustrating labor
environment.

On
the other hand, public-sector unions are under no such constraint.
KORAIL is a monopolistic government-owned corporation. Although not
unheard of, governments are much less likely to end up in
bankruptcy court than privately owned businesses. As such, public
sector unions can hold the government and the taxpayers hostage with
relative impunity.

If
the government refuses to give in to their demands, which will either
force the government to go further into debt (which increases the
risk of government insolvency) or raise taxes or borrow from future
generations, the unions either slow down or shut down essential(?)
government functions through strikes. Unsurprisingly, the unions
then lay the blame on conservative politicians.

Though
this is certainly not to say that all KORAIL workers are cynical
politicos, it has to be recognized that the aggregate public sector
employees’ salaries, benefits, and promised pensions that the
government (read, taxpayers) is supposed to pony up is both an
economic as well as an ethical problem.

There
is nothing to suggest that the students behind the AYAR Movement are
in cahoots with the public sector union. For all intents and
purposes, despite the claims
about not being oblivious about politics or economics, it seems that
the university students are not, in fact, fully aware of the facts.
Filled with energy and rosy ideals, it would appear that the
students, both pro-union
and pro-government,
are once again being used as pawns in a political battle whose
outcome, either way, will not be helpful to them.

The
Occupy
Movement started with grand hopes and ideals. For all their hopes and
ideals, however, they lacked the insightful knowledge about politics
or economics that they claimed to possess. As a result, just like
the Tea
Party Movement was hijacked by Republican operatives, the Occupy
Movement was hijacked by Democratic operatives. If history is any indicator of what is to come, it would seem that the progressive AYAR
Movement, as well as its as yet unnamed conservative counterpart, is
destined to become part of the political machine, too.

What
a shame that would be for everyone.(Next and final installment: Choosing Sides)

Thursday, December 26, 2013

It
is often said that truth is the first casualty of war. It is a
statement that appears to apply to any and all kinds of wars, just as
it applies to the political battle between the AYAR Movement and the
unions on one side and the government on the other.

She
made only the most superficial of policy changes without actually
transforming the Korean economy into a welfare economy.

She
genuinely believes in “economic democratization” but gave up on
it due to strong opposition and/or having an insufficient budget to
pay for an increase in welfare programs and/or benefits.

She
never intended to transform the economy into a welfare economy –
she lied to get elected and has chosen to return to her original
stances on issues now that she no longer has to worry about any more
future elections.

As
an advocate of laissez-faire capitalism, I am somewhat relieved that
President Park has not decided to pursue greater welfare policies and
has continued to seek more free trade deals with other nations around
the world. (That being said, I would be much happier if I saw a
reversal of a great many governmental programs that are currently in
existence.)

However,
both President Park and the ruling Saenuri Party are receiving the
ire of the people, particularly young people, because they either
broke their promises or they lied from the get-go.

If
what we are seeing today is a result of the government’s inability
to meet the president’s as well as Saenuri lawmakers’ campaign
promises due to political or economic realities, then though morally
forgivable, in the next election, they deserve to be voted out of
office so that others can be given the opportunity to see through
their vision. All the good intention in the world is nothing more
than a poor excuse in the face of incompetence.

On
the other hand, if what we are seeing today is the result of their
deliberately lying to the people for no other purpose than to ensure
electoral victory, which appears more likely, in the next election,
they deserve to be trounced thoroughly. There are enough charlatans
and power-lusters in the world as it is. The world will not miss
them when they are chucked out.

The
Park administration is on the receiving end of the AYAR Movement’s
ire because the Park administration, as well as the Saenuri
leadership, utterly failed to communicate their ideas to the people.

They
could have expressed to the people early on that economic realities
cannot permit the kinds of sweeping welfare reforms that people want;
that they can attempt to make only minor changes. They could have
treated the voters as adults and warned them that anyone who promises
to give them one government subsidy after tax benefit were liars.
Instead, they chose to engage in demagoguery.

If
they are indeed defenders of the free market (a laughable idea), then
they should have defended their own principles. Being power-lusters,
however, they instead chose to deny
and contradict, all the while claiming that it was the pragmatic and
the grown-up thing to do, until they had nothing left to betray. How
do they expect anyone to believe a word they have to say when they
have never known a single moment of principled permanence?

What the Park administration and the Saenuri Party are facing can
only be described as a crisis of no confidence. Even if they had
done none of the above, the Park administration could have bought
itself some trust by having actively engaged in the National Intelligence Service (NIS) scandal.

Much
like the emperors of old, however, President Park chose to remain
aloof in an attempt to most likely appear above petty politics. In
all the sound and fury that are surrounding the NIS’ attempt to
manufacture public opinion before last year’s presidential
election, there has not been a single shred of evidence to suggest
that President Park had been directly involved in any NIS-led
conspiracy to meddle in the elections.

Having
won the election, whether the NIS’ manufacturing of public opinion
had any real effect on her electoral victory or not, it should not
have come as any surprise that people would claim that she benefited from the NIS’ actions.

President
Park should have done the right thing from the very beginning by
firing the NIS Director, reaching out to the opposition party to
launch a very public bipartisan special investigation into the
matter, arrest every single person involved in the actions, and
disavow any and all illegal activities.

Even
if she had done all that, the rest of the year would not have been
smooth sailing. Not by a long shot. The progressives in the
National Assembly would have still continued to throw as many
stumbling blocks across the president’s path as often as they could
have. But the important thing is that she could have begun her
presidency on the right foot. She could have retained at least some
credibility with the people.

Now,
however, with everything that had been said and done, the government
appears aloof and, above all else, illegitimate while President Park appears as though she has something to hide.

And
now the government has the audacity to claim that they are arresting public union leaders who held the public hostage for the sake of the
public. The government lost the public’s trust a long time ago and now has the added benefit of being accused of following in the footsteps of President Park Chung-hee's anti-democratic and anti-union thuggery. Furthermore, the government is borrowing a page from none other than Richard
Nixon’s idea of the “great silent majority.” They are operating on the
premise that because there is a large sector of the population that
is not protesting with the union workers or with the students behind
the AYAR Movement, that somehow, they are standing up for the “real”
Korean people.

And
the gullible right-wing voters are only too happy to side with the
government believing that it is fighting for market efficiency for
the sake of the “common good” and against the “subversive outside forces.”

It
would be comical if the whole thing wasn’t so damned tragic.

(In my earlier entry, I implied that I was going to talk
about the false narrative of the People and the Police State. Unfortunately, I did
not have enough time to talk about the unions’ and the AYAR
Movement’s anything-but-heroic role in all this. I will talk about
that in the next installment.)

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

As
I read the “Are
You All Right?” (AYAR) letter,
the letter that started it all, and perused the movement’s Facebook
page, I came across hundreds of handwritten letters that others
have posted online. I am sure that if I bothered to do a Naver
search, I would have found more.

As
I read dozens of these letters, I realized that I had seen something
similar to all of this before. I saw it a little over two years ago
in the United States and it was called the
Occupy Movement; though that is not to say that they are
identical.

Most
of the letters that I read, like the original letter, were political
in nature as the writers wrote to express their support for union
workers and their disgust with the government, specifically President
Park Geun-hye. One of the writers that I came across addressed his
letter to President Park directly. He wrote his letter with his own
blood.

Others
were more personal. There were university students who were afraid
that there weren’t
any jobs waiting for them while there were middle school and high
school students who were tired of being sent to hagwons
after school. One of the more heartbreaking letters that I read was
written by an older parent who wrote to express his/her anxiety and
sadness over the fact that his/her two grown sons could not find
jobs. However, even in these personal letters people were able to
somehow manage to squeeze in bits and pieces about their opposition
to privatization of the railroads, as well as education, utilities,
health care, etc. In Korean, this kind of practice is often referred
to as 끼워맞추기.

However,
the common theme that I saw in most of those letters were their
opposition to the privatization of railroads. The leitmotif could be
summed up thusly: “With the railroad about to be privatized, how
can I be all right?”

Considering
the fact that the
original letter had been addressed to the general public, and all the
subsequent letters that have been written since have been written by
members of the public who are sympathetic to the original writer’s
beliefs, I have to question why these people seem to think that the
privatization of the railroads is not in the interests of the general
public.

And
that is the big question that is missing in these letters – Why.
They successfully managed to state the “what.” But not “why.”

Why
is the continued subsidization of the railroad industry and all
other government-owned or government-run services good for the
general public?

Why
do they feel that those workers are entitled to safe and permanent
jobs?

Why
do they feel that they
are
entitled to safe and permanent jobs?

However,
those were only the political questions that they did not ask. They
did not even bother to talk about the more abstract principles.
Either they had no interest in it or they accepted it as a given.
Questions such as:

What
is the proper role of government?

What
is the proper role of unions?

What
is capitalism?

What
is welfarism?

Not
only were these questions never asked, they implied and assumed from
the very get-go that their views are requisite for any “good
society.” Much like the Occupy Movement’s list of demands were
never explained properly as to why they were for the good of
everyone, the AYAR Movement does the same thing with their stance on
subsidization. Why is it good for the general public? Not only do
they not provide an answer, they did not even bother to ask the
question.

The
closest to stating the question of why came when, according to a news
report from The
Hankyoreh,
Kang Hun-gu, another in this growing list of university students who
are filling the ranks of the AYAR Movement, said:

“Some
are calling us ‘subversive outside forces, but we are the true
insiders, the ones who headed out to Seoul Station for our own
well-being – as people who would not be okay if the railways were
privatized, and would not be okay if the workers faced mass
suspensions. If
it’s subversive to talk about your own well-being, then we’re
going to be totally subversive now.”

But
that still does not answer the question. To use Mr. Kang’s words,
why would people not be okay if the railways were privatized? Why
would it not be conducive to the general public’s well being?

(As an aside, it is humorous that some individuals in government seemed to have thought that it would be a good idea to call these university students “subversive outside forces.” How wonderfully ironic, and poignant, that those idiots seem to be more than willing to be the stereotype that those students are accusing them of being in the first place! That being said, how ludicrous is it that these university students seem to want these same government stooges to keep control of an industry full of workers for whom they seem to share so much solidarity with?)

The
absence of these questions is unfortunate. However, it has to be
recognized that the AYAR Movement became the sensation that it has
become because the original letter struck an emotional chord with the
people.

In
my experience, social movements do not usually last for very long if
the fired up emotions that led to the initial push are not backed up
by intellectual arguments. That being said, either through
governmental decrees or cultural suppression, the Korean people have
not been allowed to express their innermost thoughts for a very long
time. It
could take a while before the people finish venting their
frustrations.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

This
is the first part of my analysis of Korea’s latest social movement,
the “Are You All Right?” (AYAR) Movement.

The
first installment of this analysis will simply be a translation of
the letter that started it all – the hand-written letter that was posted by
Ju Hyun-u, a 27-year old Korea University student a little less than two weeks ago.

I
found the letter on the AYAR Movement’s Facebook
page and have attempted to translate the letter to the best of my
abilities. Any error in the translation is strictly mine and mine
alone.

1.
Yesterday, after striking for one day, thousands of workers lost
their jobs. For no other reason than to oppose the privatization of
the rail roads, 4,213 people were relieved from their positions.
President Park Geun-hye punished the workers who protested against the privatization of the railroads, something which she herself
promised that she would not engage in without first obtaining the
people’s permission. It is possible that even the right to strike,
which is part of the country’s “Labor Laws,” that were enacted after the
self-immolation of Jeon Tae-il could also disappear.정부와
자본에 저항한 파업은 모두 불법이라 규정되니까요.
수차례
불거진 부정선거의혹,
국가기관의
선거개입이란 초유의 사태에도,
대통령의
탄핵소추권을 가진 국회의 국회의원이 ‘사퇴하라’고
말 한 마디 한 죄로 제명이 운운되는 지금이 과연
21세기가
맞는지 의문입니다.

That
is because any protest against the government or against capital is
going to be designated as being illegal. Despite the numerous times
we have been told about the fraud in last year’s presidential election and the fact that there had been illegal interference in
the election by government officials, a member of the National
Assembly who has the right to vote to impeach the president was
expelled from the National Assembly for daring to suggest
resignation. It is difficult to imagine that we are living in the 21st
century.시골
마을에는 고압 송전탑이 들어서 주민이 음독자살을
하고,
자본과
경영진의 ‘먹튀’에 저항한 죄로 해고노동자에게
수십억의 벌금과 징역이 떨어지고,
안정된
일자리를 달라하니 불확실하기 짝이 없는 비정규직을
내놓은 하수상한 시절에 어찌 모두들 안녕하신지
모르겠습니다!

In
one rural town, a high voltage electrical tower was installed, which
has resulted in the suicide of one of the town’s residents.
Furthermore, for the crime of “dining and dashing,” workers who
have lost their jobs are being fined millions of won and being
sentenced to prison. In these dubious times, I do not know how
anyone can be all right.

2. Known
as “The ₩880,000 Generation,” the world thinks of us as a
generation that has never known what it is to be poor; an affluent
generation. A generation that knows nothing about politics or
economics or what is going on in the rest of the world. However, wasn’t it
our generation, the generation that grew up alone during the IMF Crisis
of 1997~1998 as we had to guard the empty houses that we lived in,
that was forced to stay quiet; to prepare for the
University Entrance Exams despite the fact that many of our fellow
students committed suicide, and to be indifferent? We are not
indifferent to politics or to economics. Nor are we oblivious about
them. It is just that we were never asked or were given permission
to think about those issues for ourselves, or to give voice to our
opinions. We were led to believe that we could live our lives being
quiet and not have to worry.

However,
we cannot live like that anymore. That is because the world that I
live in is the kind of world that I had described earlier. I just
want to ask you if you are doing all right. Do you really not have
any worries? Do you turn the other cheek because you think that it
is someone else’s problem? Are you stepping back, rationalizing
your indifference to politics? If you are not all right, then I
don’t think you can stop yourself from declaring so, regardless of
what is ailing you. So I’d like to ask just one last time – Are
you all right?

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

On
Monday, December 16th
2013, The Korea Herald
published an editorial
about the country’s state of youth unemployment.

According
to the editorial, although statistical
studies seem to show that Korea’s labor market conditions are
improving (the
country’s overall unemployment rate has decreased by 0.1 percentage point to 2.7 percent),
the
unemployment rate for those aged from 15 to 29 increased by 0.8
percentage points from a year earlier, hitting 7.5 percent in
November.

The
total number of young people who are unemployed could very well be
higher as official unemployment figures do not count discouraged
workers.

Ironically,
this increase in the number of unemployed young people is contrasted
by the fact that many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
suffer from a chronic shortage of workers.

To
be sure, there are certainly structural problems in the Korean
economy that has exacerbated Korea’s high level of youth
unemployment. One of the main culprits behind it is the
supply-demand mismatch in the labor market. In other words, there
are far too many young people who are far too highly educated for
jobs that do not exist for them.

Case
in point, about 33.2 percent of Korea’s youth were
college-educated in 1990. In 2008, 83.8 percent of Korea’s youth
were college-educated.

Compounding
the issue is the increasing
rate of the minimum wage, which makes employers less likely to
employ young people with little to no experience and prefer those who
are older with previous work experience, and unionization that
protects older workers from having to compete for their jobs with
younger aspirants.

There
are certainly things that the government can do to alleviate the
youth unemployment rate such as reversing course on its minimum wage
policy and making it easier for employers to fire striking workers.
Furthermore, the government can try to adopt and tinker with other
successful policies such as Germany’s
apprenticeship system, which helps to ease young people’s entry
into the job market by lowering business’ costs for employing them,
while successfully avoiding the currently practiced internship
system, which essentially compels younger people to perform menial
tasks that usually have little to do with the actual jobs that they
are interning for while usually not getting paid in the name of
gaining (dubious) experience.

However,
those are only attempts at trying to solve the problem’s symptoms
rather than its causes.

One
of the underlying roots that plague Korean society, not unlike other
countries with advanced economies, is that there is a dangerous
disconnect between the demand for blue-collar work, the kind of work
that does not necessarily require a college degree, and the number of people who are willing to fill these positions. This is the
result of the Korean people’s tendency to demonize such kinds of
work.

The
fact of the matter is that, as mentioned earlier, SMEs
do suffer from a chronic shortage of workers, particularly for
blue-collar
jobs. Due to the kinds of higher education that people prefer
(with a tendency to prefer service-based jobs in chaebol
companies) and their avoidance of other skill sets, such as welding
or farming, this near nation-wide behavior has resulted in a skill
gap; meaning that there are jobs that cannot be filled by Koreans.

It
is a self-inflicted injury. In their desire to save face or conform
to society’s collectively held image of what a successful person
ought to look like, parents either force and/or socialize their
children into going to college. And when they do go to college, they
usually do so by taking out student loans that these future graduates
might not be able to repay when/if they fail to get the jobs that
they were promised but turned out did not actually exist. And this
is the problem.

This
is certainly not to say that it is undesirable to have an educated
youth. It is certainly preferable to have an educated population to
one that isn’t. However, when the motivation behind the desire to
get a college education is in order to be eligible for “better”
jobs rather than simply to attain higher education, then there is a
problem.

In
the field of economics, there is a type of good that is known as a
Giffen good.
The law of demand states that when the price of a good increases, the
demand for the good then correspondingly decreases as people begin to
seek other alternatives or substitutes. A Giffen good is a good that
defies the law of demand because it is a type of good whose demand
continuously increases even when the price of the good continuously
increases. Economists have long argued with one another over the
question of whether or not Giffen goods actually exist. Though
higher education does not meet the exact requirements of a Giffen
good, it does appear to be the closest thing to a Giffen good out
there in the market.

The
existence of a Giffen good can only come through cultural norms.
There are, indeed, plenty of alternatives to a typical college
education (when it is being used as a diploma machine in order to be
used as resumes for jobs). One can pursue a technical education, or
as mentioned earlier, seek apprenticeships. Furthermore, considering
the fact that most jobs provide on-the-job training to their new
employees and the fact that only
a small fraction of college graduates ever get to work in a field
that is related to their major, and that most college graduates (for
one reason or another) cannot
seem to find work nowadays, it would appear that a college
education is a bane rather than a boon for young people. All of
these reasons suggest that, if this were a normal market, the demand
for college education ought to fall, and fall drastically. However,
there is no visible sign to suggest that that is about to happen any
time soon.

In
other words, this Giffen good, this non-dissipating demand for higher
education, is an aberration.

That
parents wish to see their children live better lives than the ones
that they had is certainly an understandable sentiment. In fact, it
could be argued that not wishing for that would a reprehensible
violation of one of the fundamental laws of nature. However,
parents, as well as the rest of society, are failing future
generations by imposing on them a myth – the myth that a college
education guarantees “better” jobs.

As
long as this myth remains unchallenged, neither Korea nor any other
country will be able to rid itself of the problem of high levels of
youth unemployment or the ever-increasing number of discouraged young
workers.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

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About Me

My name is John Lee and I am currently the editor and writer behind the independently-run blog, “The Korean Foreigner.”

Recently, I have also begun to work as a freelance copy editor for Freedom Factory. Here, with permission from Freedom Factory, I shall post English translations of Freedom Factory’s weekly newsletter “Freedom Voice.”